Taking your Pinterest, Etsy, and Instructable ideas and giving you the low down on the cost, the time, and the skills it takes to make these at home!

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Homemade Bath Crayons... Or So They Said...

I saw these on Pinterest and thought they would be fun for any kid to have during bath time (or any adult for that matter!). Seemed simple enough:

1 bar of Ivory soap
Food coloring
Warm water

Shred soap into containers or
measuring cup

Soap will collect under grater!

So I got to work! The original post says 1C of shredded soap but 1 bar is practically 1C (maybe a liiiiitle more) so just grate the entire bar. Note that yes, your grate will be covered in soap (see right) and may cling to the back, so be sure to shake it out. If you want to skip a step, you could grate the soap into the containers you're going to use to add the food coloring, but it might get a little messy.

Once shredded, and divided into the containers you'd like to use, add the food coloring. I didn't know how much to add so I did 10 drops for each color.

Separate into containers

Now here's where I think I messed things up, so take note. It didn't say how much warm water to add so I just added a 1-2 second amount to each container, which was too much because it was very watery. The only one that didn't end up be watery was the red soap (I guess I had more soap in that container than the others!), so I was able to mold that into a heart. The others I decided to transfer to an ice tray and stick in the freezer for a while, to become a bit more solid.

So remember: keep a very watchful eye on how much water you add. It should be less than you think it needs, and mold the soap from there!

After 30 minutes, I tried the molded soap I left out (red) and while it worked, per se, it started falling apart in my hands.

After an hour and 10 minutes, I took out one of the soaps from the ice tray:

And I tried to draw on the tiles... yeah, apparently when they're cold, it's like writing with ice cubes. What's that M&M saying? "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand"? Well, the slogan for these would be, "Barely gets on the tile, falls apart in your hand."

So moral of the story is: if you're going to try these, don't expect it to look like the photo, prepare for a bit of a mess, and use very little water when molding the soap! Your kids will still have a blast with it... as long as it doesn't fall apart before they can get their hands on it!

TOTAL COSTS: $2.69
$2.69 for a 3-pack of Ivory soap from Vons
Already had food coloring on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 20 minutes (or 2 hours if you stick the in the freezer!)
5 minutes to grate soap
15 minutes to put in containers, add color and water, and form

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 2 out of 5
You just want to keep an eye out for how little water you add to the mixture. Other than that, you should be good to go! Let the kids help make the molds and have fun!